Hospitality and tourism (H&T) researchers employ structural equation modeling (SEM) and other multivariate techniques to test their models with survey data. These approaches assess relationships among constructs and model fit, but they do not highlight the most influential survey items or links among them. Other challenges include method-specific requirements for appropriate data, the best indices to identify optimal models, minimum sample sizes, missing data, and interpreting the results from complex models. Co-occurrence network analysis (CNA) can mitigate these limitations. This study validates CNA in the H&T field with a survey dataset that assesses market strategy, nonmarket strategy (NMS), organizational values, and firm performance. CNA is proposed as a complement to existing multivariate approaches for assessing survey data. The assessment includes nine steps: (1) identify the research purpose and hypothesis, (2) determine the hypothesis-related items to measure, (3) determine the sample, (4) administer the survey, (5) determine the analysis method, (6) test the hypotheses, (7) prepare survey inputs for CNA, (8) employ CNA, and (9) visualize and interpret results. This pathway demonstrates how future research can apply and address CNA’s advantages and limitations.

The restaurant market is becoming more competitive, and businesses are challenged to differentiate themselves in this sector in terms of quality of services. This research aimed to identify the specific indicators for measuring the quality of restaurant service in Brazil. Based on a quantitative paradigm, we adopted a user-generated content analysis with a sample of 1,143,631 customer reviews from 35,611 restaurants in seven Brazilian cities available on the TripAdvisor platform. We collected and registered the data in text and analyzed the results with the support of T-LAB software. Moreover, we adopted TOURQUAL Protocol (Mondo, 2014) to identify the main requirements for quality. Also, we gathered the customers points of view through reviews made on a specialized website and organized them into groups. Findings: The results showed the leading categories identified as requirements for the customers were accessibility or location, service, opening hours, infrastructure, price, quality of food, and having a variety of food options. The finding provides managers with empirical evidence of the quality drivers for Brazilian clients and sheds light on opportunities to enhance quality service. This research demonstrated its originality as the first to adopt TOURQUAL quality indicators in a large country sample with continental geographical dimensions.

This study focuses on how the concept of country of origin (COO) and national loyalty affect purchasing decisions of prospective travelers when purchasing airline tickets. The objectives of this study are to understand: (a) the relationship between demographic structures of travelers and their national loyalty status, (b) the relationship between national loyalty and national airline perceptions, (c) the construction and analysis of the measurement of national airline preference scale, and (d) testing the relationship between national loyalty, national airline perception, and preferences of foreign airlines. Data collected from 136 people residing and employed in three districts of Pennsylvania. The study findings denote that the national loyalty status of travelers affects the purchasing behaviors of air travelers. Prospective travelers do not prefer foreign airline service providers, thinking that they may damage the national airline companies and national economy. The effects of national loyalty include overrating the service quality and merit of national airlines and underrating the merits of foreign airline services. The findings of this research propose that foreign airline companies should convince international travelers that preferring their services over other airlines would not result in a disadvantage of national airlines or deteriorate economic conditions in their home countries.

This paper is an examination of how technology, specifically artificial intelligence (AI), brings about changes in business models, with corresponding impacts on the fields of economics and business. Concepts such as value creation and competitive advantage have cascading effects on organizational culture and the functional framework of a firm. Data creation, management, and curation using media platforms enable enhanced scalability and logistics management such that the firm can be re-architected around a digital core. Organizational structure with functions such as marketing and human resource management are integral links in the automated value network anticipating and responding to customers’ needs while providing increasing marginal rates of return to the firm. The thematic analysis used as a methodological research tool yielded examples of companies that have embraced AI platforms and this paper describes the tremendous growth these companies are experiencing. This paper critically assessed and highlighted the enormous benefits of the new business entity due to AI. There are limitations to algorithms based on historical data such as the perpetuation of bias, loss of privacy, and anti-competitive practices. The implications described include how to harness the potential benefits of technology while mitigating the drawbacks, such as the rise in the anti-competitive dominance of oligopolistic players.

Women’s participation and activation of their role in societies are central goals among the UN’s global aims. This research accomplished the following objectives: first, expands the existing knowledge of women’s intentions and their startup desirability for small projects; second, explores the perceived outcomes; and third, develops an action plan based on the current constraints women face when leading small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) projects. Data were collected from an online questionnaire of 433 entrepreneurs based in Saudi Arabia (26.3% university staff, 23.1% project starters, 22.9% bank loan holders, 16.2% university students, and 11.5% leaders). The partial least squares path modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the collected data. Findings confirmed that women entrepreneurs’ preferences for small projects were positively influenced by their intentions, education, personality traits, and types of SME projects. Preferences for small project startups were found to have a direct psychological, social, and economic effect. Moreover, results showed the suggested relevance of the combined model in predicting the preferences of women entrepreneurs starting SMEs (explained variance = 72%). This paper’s conceptual framework contributes to current literature on women’s entrepreneurship in a leading Arab country. The authors developed an action plan to bridge the gap between women’s entrepreneurship in practice and theory. This action plan is the first exertion to help policymakers in Arab countries better control constraints encountered by women entrepreneurs.

The purpose of the study was to examine student perceptions of teaching excellence at different types of higher education institutions. The pressure to publish, larger class sizes, globalization, technological innovation greater accountability for learning, and justification of a college degree’s worth make teaching excellence more difficult to attain. A byproduct of this pressure is an increased emphasis on student evaluations. Using two conjoint studies from a large public and a medium-size private university, assignments, exams, and grading were identified as the most important components for students in assessing teaching excellence. The least important was the faculty-student interaction, which may be caused by grade inflation. The dimensions were taken from a previously validated scale.